Travis

[Release] Cool Blob Future

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The game has been released! Try it out!  https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-4/rate/101895

UPDATE: Now has a Mac download available too!

 

Hello all!

 

This will be my second and one fourth Wizard Jam! I previously made Devil's Snuff Box (WJ2) and helped with the audio systems on The Eyes of Luigi (WJ3). For this jam, I am tackling Cool Blob Future, but definitely going to get a little help from the community.

 

I am going to try and be better about doing a dev log this time around, so I'm starting this post a bit early. I am going to keep this sort of list-y to just get quick thoughts across and to keep me from rambling (more).

 

Diversifiers:

Mainstream Thumbs - This is how we have our title and theme!

If time, will try to incorporate one or more of these: Wizard Jam Shared Cinematic Universe, Uncle Who Still Works at Nintendo, or Idol Thumbs

 

Basic Concept:

An arcade game where you have to assist an army of robots pushing hapless humans towards their inevitable absorption into the body of Cool Boss Blob. 

 

More Details:

You can check out a quick concept picture here.

The plan is to have the game play similar to Tapper or other classic frantic games. Somewhat similar to an old LCD or Game & Watch game in its state of flow/skillset. It won't control like an LCD game, of course.

You will be controlling a small cool blob who has to squeeze into gaps in the structure to allow the robots to push their humans over the gaps. If a human falls in a gap, you are penalized, because Cool Boss Blob isn't going to willingly absorb a deceased human.

There will be no jumping outside of jumping up into the gaps. To avoid oncoming robots, you will have to jump into a gap overhead, or squeeze into one below.

Your score will be increased with each human that is absorbed.

 

Team:

@BadMisty - SFX

@badatstuff - music

@Flay  - art help

@Rilen - VO cool guy

 

Thanks for reading. I can't wait to get started!

 

 

 

 

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I can record and would love to do V/O! I can't, however, in good conscience suggest that you go for me over @atte's sexy sexy voice. 

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13 hours ago, Rilen said:

I can record and would love to do V/O! I can't, however, in good conscience suggest that you go for me over @atte's sexy sexy voice. 

 

PM SENT!

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Day One (11/19/2016):

 

I quickly made up some assets to get a prototype game level up and running. This will be used to get the controllers and logic ready. Then I will start figuring out how to best lay out the level and how to work the timing of different elements. 

 

So, please ignore my ugly art. It will get better!

 

I was able to get basic controls for the cool blob down and some really basic controls for the robots and the humans they are pushing around. I have not yet designed how cool blob can jump UP into a hole above. I got started and the results were hilarious. I will work on that tomorrow, hopefully with inspiration I receive in my dreams or from beer.

 

Here is a rough gif showing the mechanics as they stand:

 

first day mechanics.gif

 

You can tell that there is no fun timing of the bots yet. I just have them all starting at the start and going for it. This won't work in the real game. You can see cool blob filling a hole to let the human/bot pass over, and see the other bots run off as their human gets stuck in a hole (and will inexplicably die).

 

Man, that background color is awful.

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What if instead of just pushing you could convince the humans that the blob future was cool and have them go on their own?

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49 minutes ago, nkornek said:

What if instead of just pushing you could convince the humans that the blob future was cool and have them go on their own?

Ha! I can't imagine how to do that with arcade-like mechanics, but I will keep thinking on it, cuz I like that concept.

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Day Two (11/20/2016);

 

Didn't have a lot of time to work on this today, but was able to get a little bit done. I feel pretty good about the way Cool Blob moves around now. Using a keyboard, anyway, he moves smoothly, and I think his jumps feel right. Probably need to do a bit more tweaking when I decide on his speed, etc. I created a basic on-screen GUI and life tracker. I kind of prefer having them just hovering over the level, but for now, they are in front of a background because assuming I have enough time to get to level 2 and scroll the game up, I think this will work better. We shall see. Mainly, I needed a way to start tracking score and lives.

 

All of this is still placeholder garbage, but you can see a human get stuck in a hole and the GUI reacts, and the score increases when a blob is "absorbed" into Boss Blob. For now, there is no depiction of him being absorbed... he just falls forever and the robot pushing him just keeps going off to the left in space. All of that will be fixed.

 

basic gui and score in place.gif

 

@Rilen submitted a killer demo to win himself the cool guy emoting job! I am stoked to have him on board. I still have to send him the lines, but this is good to have locked down.

@badatstuff sent me a draft of some music that is sounding great already. I went ahead and threw it into the game so it would feel farther along than it is... and it worked!

 

I was struggling with how to manage Cool Blob falling off into the area where the humans are being pushed into Boss Blob. I was thinking about some sort of human-only door so that Cool Blob couldn't pass through. I think I've decided to let you fall off and get absorbed into the Boss Blob and then with a delay, get spit back out on a random floor. So, it is a punishment that will mess up your timing, but maybe if you need a hail mary to get to a certain floor immediately, you will go for it and hope to get spit out at the perfect location. I will probably try to work on this, more robot/blob reactions to events, and start figuring out actual hole placement and bot timing tomorrow. This will take a lot of iterating, I am sure, so I need to get a first draft in place before I start actually making the game look somewhat decent. 

 

I am glad I can see things taking shape, even if it is still kind of unattractive to look at. 

 

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Day Three (11/21/2016):

 

Had one solid chunk of time to work on things this afternoon. No new gifs to show today, but I got the cool-blob/boss-blob interaction working (without any sort of visual appeal), and got a lot of the other interactions done between blob/humans and robot/humans. I have created a lot of possible scenarios here that have to be coded, so it is taking some time on something that looks fairly basic. I didn't yet get to timing any of the bot spawning, etc. I will try to get to that tomorrow as well as starting on developing some sort of aesthetic here so I can chip away at that over the next two weeks.

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Days Four and Five (11/22/2016 & 11/23/2016):

 

I have been working on several of the mechanics down for each scenario. Blob into hole, blob hits big blob, blob hits human, blob hits robot, etc... There are a lot of scenarios and how things should react. I have gotten most of the rudimentary actions in place now, so I have started doing some of the animating and art improvement. I think the little cool blob is looking pretty good, although he probably needs a little polishing (if time). I have barely started on the boss blob and have just been messing with palettes for the level itself, etc.

 

The boss blob is made up of stacking segments, so figuring out which pieces will be animated for which events is going to take some time. The way I have him built right now is not going to work well, but I think it is a decent foundation. 

 

So, here is a short gif just showing the blob jumping in and out of holes and idling here and there. I should have a bit more time later today to do some more, but figured I would post some sort of an update to keep this a habit.

 

If only gifs had sound... BadMisty has started sending me sounds, and his blob sounds for going in and out of the hole are fantastic! Very blobby!!

 

most blob movements.gif

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Days 5 & 6 (11/24/2016 & 11/25/2016):

 

I wasn't able to do much of anything yesterday, as I was Thanksgivinging all day long. Got to fix an oddball character controller bug today, and outside of one other oddball case, I think/hope I have that locked down. I tried my hand at making the Boss Blob look a little better and animating him jiggling away over to the side... it didn't go too well. So, I finally turned to figuring out the real layout of platforms, holes, robot timing, robot speed, blob speed, etc... I have a few variables to play with! This is going to take some time, but I got a bot spawner set up with all of the knobs and levers I need to tweak away until it feels fun! 

 

I will also be adding a flashing light or some indicator when a bot is about to start heading down a floor. 

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Well, yesterday (Saturday), I really started trying to figure out how to time everything, and it was a complete disaster. I slowly worked through the problem today with some serious Excel work and think I have a good approach. I can definitely manually create timings of everything, but I am pretty sure I have developed a system of equations that can randomly determine when to spawn bots on the level I have laid out. Tomorrow, I will code it up and see how it goes. This took a lot more time than anticipated, leaving things like animation and a few bug fixes lingering. If I can code up the spawn logic, that will save me from doing it manually at least, so I have my fingers crossed.

 

badatstuff and BadMisty have continued to provide amazing sounds an a cool track that is very fitting. A rudimentary animation for the boss blob I had looks like he is just moving to the beat, so I think I am going to just improve that animation as best I can.

 

Also, Flay was able to make a Big Dog sprite, which is awesome! Hopefully he will have time to animate it, else I will have to hammer it in there, and I'm sure I won't make it as nice.

 

Big Dog_5x.png

 

 

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Fixed the blob movement loop and added a sort of stylized loop for the big dog. Might work, might not. If we get it animated I'll create some mechanical footstep sounds. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B66AOTgo4CENYzFQQ3pyZ3lUWGM

Also what kind of sound are you looking for with the human death sound? (other than the Wilhelm scream idea which scares me to even think about ;)). Don't know other than the vocalization what the rest of that sound should be like. As in what materials should I make it sounds like he's falling into. Or is the human vaporizing. That sort of thing.

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I am fairly certain I have gotten the logic down to spawn bots randomly in a way that is possible for you to actually score points. This took MUCH longer than anticipated. I just need to do a few more things to make it generate ad infinitum and then that part will be complete! (Dear God, I hope so.) 

 

Once I get that wrapped up, I can finally get back to making things look better and posting screens and things. Lots on my to-do list to get this looking and playing decent. Hopefully I can fit in everything I have planned. 

 

This is not an exciting update, but felt the need to post some relief and getting through something that was pretty rough. Phew.

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I started working on the "art" a lot more yesterday and today, starting with the level pieces. I got a draft of the animations for the people and the Big Dog done when they are pushing to the left. It is hard to see the Big Dog's legs in this gif, but here they are as he drops off a person, and then zooms back. This giffing program can't capture the frantic backwards Big Dog footwork! The person still needs some work, but I think it's getting there.

 

early animation of guy and big dog.gif

 

Here is the Big Dog animated. I had to watch the video of its walk, and it is even stranger when you're paying close attention. It's diagonal legs are perfectly coordinated. Eerie.

 

Big Dog.gif

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Well, I just downright ignored this devlog after a while. I am too tired to write anything notable about finishing the game at the moment, but will try to make some final notes in here at some point.

 

The game is released, so go give it a try! Thanks to Flay, badatstuff, BadMisty, and Rilen for their contributions!

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Great idea and works nicely! The animation of the blob getting into place is weirdly satisfying to watch!

 

Is it possible to jump over the Big Dogs when they return?

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41 minutes ago, Sloane said:

Great idea and works nicely! The animation of the blob getting into place is weirdly satisfying to watch!

 

Is it possible to jump over the Big Dogs when they return?

Thanks for playing! It is possible, but not really by intention. I think I got that to work once, and I had to play a bunch. The intended way to avoid them is to hide in a hole... but hitting them isn't so bad all the time ;)

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33 minutes ago, kevin888 said:

Top notch blob animations. Really fun concept. Cool game.

 

Thanks for playing and thanks for the positive response! 

 

I will probably post what I wish had gone differently (even within the span of the jam) soon.

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This was great - hilarious 90s Cool Spot/ToeJam & Earl style presentation and a nice little arcade game to boot. I got 1700 score!

 

Something to consider might be taking out jumping - might be more fun purely with the direction keys. But that could be misjudged armchair design on my part.

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29 minutes ago, Ben X said:

This was great - hilarious 90s Cool Spot/ToeJam & Earl style presentation and a nice little arcade game to boot. I got 1700 score!

 

Something to consider might be taking out jumping - might be more fun purely with the direction keys. But that could be misjudged armchair design on my part.

 

Thanks for playing and the input! 

 

I iterated a bit on the jumping mechanics. At first, you could only jump up into the holes, and you could press up. It felt... constrained. The way it is now feels better to me than the way I had it before, but maybe there is a different way to implement it that would feel good. 

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I just wanted to write down a few thoughts I had at the end of making this thing. Maybe this is just for me, I'm not sure.

 

Things I Wish Were There:

  • More levels - Originally hoped that after you got X number of people fed to the Boss Blob, you would have to move up to the top as his roiling, growing mass filled the screen and then a new level layout would be one screen up.
  • Better level generation - To get more levels, I would have had to define the properties of the movement systems better. This is a math problem that I never solved properly, but I think I can now in hindsight. I sort of panicked about midway through the jam when I went to start setting up timing and placement of things and it was a disaster. I got it to work as well as it is with a lot of trial and error and some good old fashioned fudge factors. It seems to work well for this one level, but it is not flexible at all. 
  • Better art - I think a lot of it turned out fairly well. The fact that I had to do most of the asset creation myself really drained my time and kept me from doing other things for the game. I am satisfied with most of the art, except the guy. His animation is not the greatest. I am pretty happy with the blobs and level tiles, though.

 

Things I am Happy About:

  • That it works and I got done - Having Thanksgiving in the middle of this jam ended up sapping about 3 days of productivity. Apparently, Thanksgiving takes up a lot of my time and I never really noticed before.
  • The help I had!! - The voice work, sound effects, and music I received are really awesome and add a lot to the game. I am not sure what I would have done without the help. Even getting a Big Dog sprite from Flay was a huge help! I don't think I could have designed a sprite that looked that good.
  • Laughing at this crap - I laughed at the whole thing quite a bit the last couple of days. Will everyone else think the combination of animation, sound, and cool emotes are as funny as I do? I doubt it. That's OK, though, because I got a huge kick out of it. Also, the title screen still makes me chuckle.
  • Stuff I did add - I don't' think anyone has played the game enough to find special stuff I added. Even if nobody finds it, I am satisfied with what I was able to add in the final day.
  • That I don't feel the need to add more - Even though I wish I had done some other stuff, and figured out a level generation scheme, I don't think anyone will play this game enough to justify me taking the time to add in more levels, etc. I have finished games in jams before and really felt like I had more to do. I could add those features, but the little bugs and sloppy things that I had to leave in there to meet the deadline didn't seem too bad. Now I can go finish revising my previous jam game!
  • The Idle Thumbs Community is amazing! - Everyone is very kind, encouraging, and helpful! I really relied on taking quick breaks by reading the slack channel while I was working on this, and it helped a lot. Thanks to everyone for being really supportive and helpful!

I hope people enjoy what they play of my game. Thanks for letting me ramble on here to get things out of my head about this whole experience.

 

Here are a couple of screens and things since I never posted "final" versions in this thread as it went:

Title Screen.pngScreen - jumping.pngScreen - zero points.png

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This is great, Travis! I laughed the whole time :) The mellow 90s music, the rad VO, the silly premise. Everything felt like a funky mess. Great job, everyone!

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24 minutes ago, coughlinjon said:

This is great, Travis! I laughed the whole time :) The mellow 90s music, the rad VO, the silly premise. Everything felt like a funky mess. Great job, everyone!

 

Glad you liked it!

 

I need to submit a fix for a missing sound effect sometime soon. Hopefully today. Not game breaking, bug annoying.

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This is very complete and a lot of fun. I wish the movement speed was a little faster and that humans could get a little closer to the hole before falling in, but once I got the hang of things it felt very doable.

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